


Time Means Little

by AnnCherie



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 10:28:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13188168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnCherie/pseuds/AnnCherie
Summary: Jace ages through the years, sometimes reluctantly, with his immortal boyfriend Simon





	Time Means Little

**Author's Note:**

  * For [openandbroken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/openandbroken/gifts).



Technically, Jace could have turned at anytime. He could have been stripped of his marks and become a Downworlder just like Luke. At times like this, he almost considered it. Simon had never brought it up, never dared to ask or wonder. To Simon, Jace’s entire identity revolved around being a Shadowhunter. For the most part, he wasn’t wrong. Alec had asked him once, when Jace was getting ready to propose, if he would ever turn. It wasn’t necessarily about Jace and Simon’s future though. Alec was also married to an immortal and now that he had Magnus had children together Jace could see how the question would be on his mind. Jace had frowned, wondering how on earth he’d deal with losing the parabatai bond that he and his adopted brother shared. He wondered how Alec-- head of the New York Institute and leader of so many Shadowhunter affairs would ever be able to step down. It was also part of Alec’s core identity, but Alec was also now a husband and a father and family had always come before duty in the end. Jace didn’t have an answer.

 

When Jace finally did propose, Simon was surprised. Jace knew what the surprise stemmed from, knew from the way that later that night after celebrating and happiness Simon had watched him from across the room with a briefly distant look. He was whispering to Clary, who looked serious but also reassuring. And when Clary hugged Simon and said something in his ear before leaving for Izzy’s side, the happy look returned to Simon’s face.

  
  


\---------

  
  


It starts in their mid thirties, slowly and innocently at first. Simon drags him to a mundane gay bar that the vampire likes because he wants to get out of the rut of only hanging out at Hunter’s Moon-- Jace doesn’t have the same feeling, but he’s never had a mundane life to miss like Simon, so he agrees. The bar is packed with people and Jace is trying to ignore his decades of training by pretending he’s not secretly worried about a demon attack while he’s not glamoured and without his sword. He’s gotten better over the years, Simon had managed to get him to go out without any gear other than the small seraph knife in his boot, but he still finds the fingers of  one hand drumming on the bar while he’s drinking whiskey with the other. His husband had gone to take a piss and Jace isn’t drunk enough to have at him in the stalls of a more than likely unhygienic public restroom.

 

“You did well for yourself!” One of the guys next to him states, looking over with a grin. Jace narrows his eyes, confused and a little caught off guard. The older gentleman was sitting alone but looked completely friendly. Jace knew he was being complimented for catching Simon, which honestly was about time because it had been years of bickering and denying feelings before they finally got together, but when Jace smiles about to say thank you, the mundane adds, “I wish I could find someone that young and mature. Age difference always get in the way for me.”

 

There definitely weren’t any demons here, but Jace’s blood pressure sky rockets. He’s not an idiot, he’s thought about the visual age difference more than once lately, but in his world everyone knows that Simon isn’t nineteen years old. No one at Hunter’s Moon or the Jade Wolf comment on the fact Jace is starting to have permanent laugh lines after years of being happy with Simon because they know what Jace and the couple have been through. In his world, their marriage is relatively normal-- for a Shadowhunter and a vampire. 

 

Simon is back before either the man or Jace fill the very awkward silence that has ensued after the comment and with a grin his husband pulls him onto the dance floor and he forgets about the remark until the next morning, looking into the mirror.

  
  


\------------

  
  


“Have you ever thought about adopting?” Jace asks him one day, admittedly out of the blue, but they had just finished a rather spectacular tumble in bed and the oxytocin in his brain was running high and filling his body.

 

His husband’s eyes widened rather dramatically, as he quickly turned in bed to stare at Jace with surprise. Simon watched him in silence for a moment, brown eyes hesitant and unsure as he admitted, “Sometimes.”

 

“Only sometimes, though?” Jace asked for confirmation.

 

Simon nodded, his face turning serious and his eyes searching Jace’s. “I mean in theory, it’d be great. I mean Alec and Magnus make it work, but I don’t think-- I’m not sure we could.”

 

The words were said as gently as possible, and Jace was grateful, but he still couldn’t help but feel some sadness creep up inside of him. Which confused him, honestly, because he had never once imagined having children after being raised by Valentine and finding out what his biological parents had suffered and done. He didn’t trust himself to raise a child right, not really, but he would have trusted Simon maybe. Slowly, Jace nodded.

 

“I mean,” Simon continued. “It would be one thing to raise a child if we were both  mundane and free of enemies, but even then we haven’t been raised by the best parents. Not that my mom hasn’t changed, or doesn’t love me, or that people raised badly can’t be good parents, but--,”

 

“I understand,” Jace cut in with a small smile before Simon could spiral even more. 

 

“You’ve always been a career man anyway,” Simon added, tracing Jace’s angelic power rune around the crease of his left arm. “I’ve always known that. And I’m not sure a vampire husband is the best stay-at-home dad, daylighter or not.”

 

Jace laughed a little at that. “Maybe not. You’d spend all your time worrying that they were okay that we’d never have time to ourselves.”

 

Simon snorted in return. “Me? You’d be checking your phone every five seconds and get killed by some demon the second our kid was sick.”

 

With another laugh, Jace rolled over and kissed Simon gently. “You might be right, but I’ll never admit it.”

 

He didn’t pull away.

 

“I believe you just did by default,” Simon chuckled, the sound moving against their pressed lips.

 

\---------

  
  


When he’s nearing fifty, he dyes his hair every time he has to go out and see Simon’s family to make sure there isn’t a single gray strand. Now at half a century old he’s thankful for a lifetime of shadowhunting that keeps his body in excellent shape even at his age. He doesn’t recover from battles as quickly-- an iratze can’t quite take the soreness away-- but he still has no problem fighting and that’s what matters. No one can touch him in battle after this much time, no one dares even try, and whenever there’s a casualty Jace remembers how entirely lucky he is to be a Shadowhunter at this age with what they’ve gone through. 

 

Even when the Clave starts asking him to retire to Idris.

 

“You ready to go?” Simon asked him, no longer looking angry. The fight over whether or not Jace had to attend a very public and mundane high school graduation for their niece unglamored had been huge, but after this long in marriage Simon knew exactly how to get his way. While Jace’s  _ body _ was now entirely satisfied, his  _ mind _ was still a little annoyed.

 

“Yes,” Jace sighed.

 

“It’s not like you’re going to be alone,” Simon argued casually this time. “First of all, Clary is coming with us and looks both your age and secondly,  _ I’m _ the one who should be glamoured to match our age.”

 

Softening as he picked up on the undercurrent of emotion behind Simon’s words, Jace shook his head and moved over to his husband and kissed him sweetly before pulling back. “Of course not, babe. You’re beautiful.”

 

“So are you, old man,” Simon replied with a wink, kissing Jace back. He chuckled a little too happily when Jace grumpily swore under his breath as he pulled away.

 

“Well at least your appearance matches your maturity,” Jace shot back even though he was still pleased by the kiss and their makeup excursion earlier. Simon laughed. What had once been verbal battle after battle when they were young had turned into loving wit and teasing jabs now that they were old.

  
  


When they arrived to what was possible the most ridiculous set up of an arena that Jace had ever seen-- Simon informed him that they were high school standard football stands-- they greeted Elaine and the very proud mothers Rebecca and Maia. Maia and Rebecca’s love story was a long but very cute (and in Jace’s opinion bordering cheesy one). When Maia and Simon had broken up over Jace, Maia and Simon had still stayed friends. When Rebecca had found out about Simon and delved ever so slightly into their world to support Simon’s music, she and Maia had reconnected. Apparently they had first met when Simon had needed a fake date for a family thing, and the rest was history.

 

Every now and then Jace had to laugh at the fact that the only straight person he spent time with was his brother Max and adopted mother Maryse. 

 

They all sat together for the very, very long program. There were overdrawn speeches and then an even longer process of each individual teenager receiving a piece of paper. Jace couldn’t help but ask Clary and Simon, “You actually went through this mundane practice without shooting yourself? This is the most boring thing I’ve sat through since the Clave’s annual meeting.”

 

Both of them laughed, although he did get a quick glare from Maia before she proudly turned back to the ceremony. Clary shrugged. “It wasn’t all bad, you know. Being able to be normal and not worry about-- the  _ monsters _ of adult life.”

 

Jace smirked at the secret reference that the mundanes would brush off.

 

“I don’t know, I definitely encountered some monsters in high school,” Simon sighed. “Having glasses, asthma, and an obsession with video games and comics wasn’t the coolest I’ve ever been.”

 

“Assuming you’re much cooler now,” Jace retorted with a smile, and Simon lightly elbowed him in the side. 

 

“Watch it,” Simon replied, but his eyes were twinkling.

 

Unable to help it, Jace kissed Simon, who didn’t pull away until they heard a very judgemental and disapproving cough from behind them. Jace’s hands tightened, although his fingers fiddled with the position where his seraph blade was usually holstered. Clary gave them a sympathetic look, glaring back at the rude bystander behind them.

 

“Is now a bad time to try and lighten the mood?” Simon whispered to Jace.

 

Jace looked at him warily, whispering back, “I swear to the angel if you make one cradle-robber joke I’m divorcing you immediately.”

 

Simon nodded, slightly smiling, but kept his mouth shut.

 

After what seemed like forever the conductor of the ceremony got to the “L” surnames and they all cheered wildly for Angela Lewis-Roberts. Clary motioned for Jace to follow her out of the stands once the ceremony dragged on. Excited for any distraction whatsoever, he waited for Clary to speak before he ordered a corndog from a questionable stand.

 

“I was going to wait for your birthday, and I know it’s only a month and a half away, but I think you might want it now,” she replied, and Jace gave her a look to express how vague she was being.

 

She sighed, taking his arm and dragging him under the bleachers of the stand, activating their glamour runes. Jace was about to ask what the hell was going on when she took his arm and found an empty spot, then asking, “Do you trust me?”

 

“Forty years of experience tells me it’s fifty-fifty,” Jace replied, slightly joking.

 

Clary narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m serious Jace. You know my gift to create runes, and that it’s hard for me to see anything without angelic interference, but I think I finally-- I think I finally created one on my own.”

 

“Did you test it?” Jace asked, unsure.

 

“No, not yet. After all that we’ve been through together you and I, I thought you deserve it first. I know it will work, Jace, I promise. Everything in me tells me it will work. I even consulted Tessa Herondale-Carstairs, and then she asked Catarina Loss who told Magnus, and while Magnus told me to be careful he seems to think it will work too.”

 

“What does it do?”

 

“I-- I really want to try it before I tell you, just in case it doesn’t work. Please trust me Jace.”

 

He watched her carefully, brown eyes still sparkling behind her ever aging wrinkled heart shaped face. She and Izzy didn’t have to worry about things like that. Death, sure, because life as a Shadowhunter was never certain, but not aging. They would age gracefully together, die not too soon after each other, and be celebrated as they became a part of the City of Bones together. Sometimes it felt woefully unfair.

 

Jace nodded, finally, and winced as Clary drew a brand new intricate and what felt like more permanent rune. She didn’t look up at him for a moment, her eyes closed, and Jace didn’t feel any different than he had five minutes ago. It must not have worked. But when Clary opened her eyes and looked up at him, her mouth opened and she gasped, and within seconds her eyes were tearing up.

 

“Stay here!” she commanded firmly, running off back to the stands and Jace wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do other than listen considering he didn’t know all of the rune’s effects. When Clary came back it was with a very confused Simon in tow until he looked up at Jace and stopped in his tracks, immediately still.

 

Whatever Clary had done Jace was starting to feel self conscious, at least until Simon rushed forward with vampire speed he shouldn’t be showing in public and kissed Jace hard while laughing. Simon pulled back, staring, finally announcing, “You look twenty years old.”

 

Immediately worried and slightly panicked, Jace turned to Clary. “That shouldn’t be possible-- glamours only work if you’re changing to someone else-- you can’t change back time, not even you--.”

 

“Of course not,” Clary reaffirmed. “But it is a glamour, for you and of you. I based it off of the invisibility rune. It’s taken ages without the Angel’s help, and I don’t mean ages as a pun Simon.”

 

Simon shook his head with a laugh. Jace was still in shock, wondering where the nearest mirror might be.

 

“You know you look handsome at any age,” Simon told him with a wide grin. “But I have to admit, twenty three still looks amazing on you.”

 

“It’s not for his vanity or your sexual attraction,” Clary huffed at her best friend of all these years. “You simply both deserve to be wherever you want to be in the world without assholes judging you for some age difference that doesn’t even exist.”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about Clary, the four years I have on him makes me worlds more mature,” Jace laughed, feeling light.

 

“I think this calls for a vacation,” Simon half-exclaimed, his excitement lighting up his entire face. “Where do twenty year olds go for fun now-a-days?”

 

Clary snorted with laughter, but was interrupted when Maia and Rebecca found them. Rebecca stared in absolute shock, yet Maia blinked once before taking it in stride. “Not the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to us.”

 

Not even close, Jace thought happily, but definitely one of the most pleasant ones.

  
  
  


\----

  
  
  


His hearing rune is pissing Jace off, still activated from a recently completed battle that his younger brother Max-- now fifty one years old-- had tried to tell him not to go to. Well, that's not entirely true. It's not the rune as much as the fact that his age glamour-ing rune will take too much energy to activate while he’s healing and trying to stop the others. Age isn’t treating his probably too-active body nicely anymore, angel blood or not.

 

The four teenage girls sitting what they must have thought was a safe distance away at the outside seating of a local ice cream shop were whispering about him. Simon was eyeing Jace with a touch of worry in his expression, easily able to hear every word as well.

 

“How rich do you think he is?” one of the girls asked after they had seen Simon and him kiss. Jace had originally thought he was still glamoured but it had worn off and was too late to fix now. “I mean he's  _ old _ , and he's dating someone our age!”

 

Jace’s ice cream was starting to melt all over his hand, ignored. Simon gave Jace a knowing smile, clearly trying to defuse the situation while also probably thinking of how many “sugar daddy” remarks he can make later when Jace has calmed down.

 

“Okay yeah he's old but he's not ugly,” one of the other girls said. Jace decides someone this young thinking he isn't ugly might actually be worse even if flattering. “I mean Pierce Brosnan used to be hot at like 60 something.”

 

Simon bursts out laughing and Jace is left confused about who exactly this Pierce Brosnan person is and why the hell these girls think he looks sixty. Well he  _ was  _ sixty-six, but he still refused to believe he looked it. He shot Simon a questioning look and when the girls moved on thinking they hadn't been heard, his husband explained, “He played James Bond a few times when we were young. Sexy spy fighter.”

 

Jace blinked, feeling slightly better about things. “That's the person you made me dress up as for Halloween years ago, right? And after you made me watch way too many Bond movies with way too many actors you decided it'd be hot to role play?”

 

Simon ducked his head, clearly blushing at the memory and the fact it hadn't been forgotten. “You remember  _ that _ but not a single plot of Harry Potter.”

 

“Harry Potter didn't get me laid,” Jace replied with a smirk. “Ask me about Star Wars.”

 

Simon coughed into his ice cream at the innuendo and memories, making Jace's grin widen. This was his favorite part of being married, the way he knew Simon inside and out and how even now they could embarrass each other like they were barely twenty all over again. Giving him a chance to recover while they're in public, Jace asks, “How do they even know who he is?”

 

“I think ABBA came back into fashion as a ‘historical classic’ and people decided to watch the Mamma Mia movies,” Simon said thoughtfully. “Or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, he's in his sixties in the movies.”

 

Not sure whether to roll his eyes at a forty year old movie filmed in HD being called a classic or simply just sighing and letting it go, he chooses to fix the ice cream situation going on. There's easy too much of a mess to fix with his mouth so he hands his cone over to Simon while he grabs a multitude of napkins from the table container. It's no longer covering his hand, but now he's sticky, and when he looks up Simon is giving him a mischievous grin. At first he just thinks it's a ‘we can work with sticky’ innuendo for home, but a little too late he realizes that Simon is abandoning Jace's ice cream and instead kissing him long and hard in front of the teenage girls, leaving no room for judgment. They were still in love, no matter their age. 


End file.
